Last week, everyone’s favorite emo-esque (at least in the hair department) American Idol contestant David Cook totally ripped off Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (or did he rip off Incubus? Hmmm…). So does anyone know if Dashboard Confessional does a version of “Eleanor Rigby” on tour?
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David Archuleta is one of the current American Idol favorites, and he seems to be specializing in depressing ballads. Two weeks ago it was John Lennon’s “Imagine” (which Archuleta somehow thinks is a happy song… clearly it’s a lament at the impossibility of Utopia, right?) and more recently, it was Phil Collin’s “Another Day in Paradise,” which is not a song that could possibly be interpreted as happy (unless you enjoy the plight of the homeless, I suppose).
The first week of the top twelve is Beatles week, so what sad song can he do from the Lennon/McCartney songbook? Off the top of my head I can’t think of any particularly sad Beatles songs…
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I enjoy reading the roundups of American Idol from Dave, Idolator, and Balko, but I was surprised that no one (not even commenters, I think) noticed that David Cook’s version of “Hello” was entirely ripped off from Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.
Ok, not entirely ripped off, it was a little slower, but if you’re doing a rock version of a Lionel Richie song that has to be the first band that comes to mind.
Anyway, I hope he keeps this up. Maybe for Beatles week he can do “All My Loving,” from the classic Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Blow in the Wind.
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All the hype over there about She & Him is completely justified. Volume One
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Aquarium Drunkard has posted a fascinating, and beautifully written, obituary to alt-country occasioned by the shuttering of the genre mag No Depression. I was glad to see that it gives proper credit to Whiskeytown and their seminal album Strangers Almanac, which got released in super-duper reissue format today.
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I really dig cover albums. I don’t mean albums of unrelated cover songs, like Cat Power’s Jukebox or Covers Record, although those are cool, too. I mean a band covering another band’s album in its entirety.
Unfortunately I can’t find a definitive webpage on cover albums. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one; This could just be one of those things that’s hard to search for. Plug “cover album” into Google and all you find is the the albums of cover songs, like the Cat Power records listed above or you find websites that specialize in finding cover art for your MP3s.
The cover albums that I know about (and have in my iTunes collection) are:
Pussy Galore, Exile on Main St. (Originally by the Rolling Stones)
The Walkmen, Pussy Cats (Originally by Harry Nilsson)
Ben Lee, New Wave (Originally by Against Me!)
Dirty Projectors, Rise Above (Originally Damaged by Black Flag)
Redd Stripes, Redd Blood Cells (Originally White Blood Cells by the White Stripes)
Some of these fit the formula more than others. The Walkmen album is pretty much a note-for-note recreation of the Nilsson version, and Ben Lee’s New Wave is also very much like the original. On the other hand, the Dirty Projectors take on Damaged is very different. Reportedly Dave Longstreth didn’t listen to the album again, he wanted to record his impressions, from memory, of the Black Flag version, not actually create covers. For that reason it’s missing entire songs, and in some places the lyrics are completely different.
I’m not sure that the Redd Stripes thing really counts as a cover album at all. Stephen Banes, the bassist for Redd Kross, decided that he had to know what the White Stripes would sound like with a bassist. So he took every song on White Blood Cells and recorded a bass track on top of it and then put them on the Internet. The results are really very cool.
There were rumors back in the day that either Sonic Youth or the Minutemen were going to record a cover of the Beatles White Album, but, unfortunately, that didn’t pan out. That would have been fuckin’ awesome! Hell, it still would be. Watt, call up Thurston and make it happen.
If you know of any other cover albums, please let me know.
Update, 3/14/2008: From the comments, Tusk by Camper Van Beethoven, originally by Fleetwood Mac. Then, from the iTunes review of the Tusk cover, Blood on the Tracks by Mary Lee’s Corvette, originally by Bob Dylan. I don’t have either of these, but it looks like they wouldn’t be too expensive to buy used on Amazon.
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The best part of American Idol tonight? Simon says Chris Sligh ain’t so great. But Chris is funnier than, smarter than, and just as acerbic as Simon.
So he responds, “So I don’t sing like Il Divo…”
(Sticking the knife in.)
“Or the Teletubbies.”
(And twist.)
Perfect. I think he actually made Cowell angry.
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Here in the Denver area the Raconteurs/Cat Power episode of Austin City Limits is going to come on in five minutes. If you’ve got the time you should really change the channel to PBS (or, even better, just point your DVR at it). The Raconteurs are just ok… I mean, they’re good, but just what you’d expect. But the concert is nearly worth the price of admission (err… you know what I mean) just for Cat Power’s silly Mick Jagger impression when the band is starting into a cover of “Satisfaction.” The two songs from older albums (the previously mentioned Stones song and “Cross-Bones Style”) both really benefit from the southern soul style of her current band.
I do wish they’d done “Love and Communication.” That’s my favorite song from the new album, but they did play three of my other favorites, so I’m still happy.
“Wow, that’s a lot of parentheticals,” I thought to myself while rereading this post. Then I added another because it seemed better than the commas I had before.
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Sadly, the greatest current rock ‘n’ roll band broke up went on hiatus earlier this year. Just after they announced the break up hiatus they recorded a concert for the NPR series “All Tunes Considered” at the 9:30 Club in D.C. The results are great… I’m no bootleg expert, but the sound quality seems good to me and all the songs really rock (both the band and the crowd seem to be savoring the last moments). You can get a copy of that concert from NPR’s website, but it’s a single, 2 hour-long track… for 24 songs! Annoying, to say the least.
So I took that track and used the excellent (but command-line only, at least on Windows) open-source app MP3splt to break it into 27 separate tracks, including the intro and two intermission breaks. You can download it via BitTorrent.
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First, out of all the songs on Rolling Stones’ 100 Best of 2006 list I would not have expected that my favorite would be a Carrie Underwood song, “Before He Cheats.” (This is the song she sang during halftime of that Thanksgiving football game, right?) I loved, loved, loved Carrie when she was on American Idol, but I never expected to really like her actual releases. Regardless, it’s awesome.
RS is wrong about the best cover of Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy” (the original is number one, natch. Can’t really argue with that.) Clearly the best is the version by the Kooks, with Nelly Furtado in second. The Raconteurs do a good job, as do the Twilight Singers, but those versions just don’t hold up.
As an honorable mention, “Gin & Milk” by Dirty Pretty Things is really awesome.
If you want/need any of these songs please email me and I’ll hook you up.
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